Burning 50% more of our money

In a new report, the TaxPayers’ Alliance outlines the way that over the last decade British taxpayers have faced a huge increase in their tax bills, but at the same time, they’ve been made to pay additional fees and charges for what used to be “free” public services. To cap it all, service levels have suffered widespread cuts. Faced by a rising cost of living, these taxes and charges are adding a sizeable burden to ordinary households.

It all adds up to the Great British Taxpayer Rip-Off.

Key Findings:Rising taxes

The tax bill has soared, increasing over 50% in ten years even taking inflation into account. Through vast increases in a range of up-front taxes, stealth taxes and cunning measures such as fiscal drag, the average household tax bill has grown to £20,700.

The total Stamp Duty collected has increased a staggering 314% in the last ten years. Together, the nine fastest growing taxes, which are detailed in the report, make up three quarters of tax revenue.

Fiscal drag, by which the Government catches millions of people in higher tax bands by raising thresholds slower than inflation, has raised £80 billion in the last ten years, including £14 billion in the last year alone.

Higher Charges

The total cost of NHS, local authority and quango charges is now over £17 billion per annum, nearly £700 per household.

Full details of the range of charges are given in the report, but some examples include: school dinners charges have risen 50% in ten years to £1 billion per annum; parking charges and fines have risen to over £1 billion; Hospital car parks raise over £100m in England alone.

The full report provides the most comprehensive analysis of the rise in taxes, stealth taxes and charges that has ever been compiled, illustrating the burden borne by ordinary families across the country. A PDF of the report is attached to this email.Mike Denham, the former Treasury Economist who authored the report, said:

“The Government has used every trick in the book to drive up the tax burden, and ordinary families are paying a heavy price. People are increasingly beset by record levels of taxation and growing service charges, but there has been no improvement in services in return. We find ourselves paying more and more for less and less. With rocky economic times ahead, this rate of taxation simply cannot be sustained.”

Aren't you all grateful? Gordon Brown, economic genius, has raised enormous amounts of cash and pissed an awful lot of it up the wall. Hoorah!

"Government spending is set to reach £600 billion – £10,000 for person in the UK, and twice as much as in 1997. If public spending had only grown in line with inflation since then, we could have abolished income tax, corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax by now, leaving the taxpayer £200 billion better off."

If that isn't damning evidence that the snot-gobbling, rocking horse riding cunt ISN'T a financial genius then I don't know what is.

ZanuLieBore have been spunking our money up the wall for 11 years while still trying to claim that Broon is the great Chancellor ever. What a bunch of tossers.

I heard today on Radio 4 that during the oil boom, Norway invested it all and could now take a two year holiday and no one would notice.

We, on the other hand, have spent it all on leisure centres named after dead black kids, pissed it all up the wall having illegal wars and spunked what little money the North Sea brought us on giving "shareholder" value to privatised industries.

And the cunt has the cheek to ask us how we would like to pay for our old age care?

Here's a clue, you monocular moron. Any party that prefers to spend money on a Potato Marketing Board rather than pensioners is not going to get elected in 20 years time, no matter how much of our money you have filched for yourself and your crony mates.

What makes things all the more depressing is that the Tories can't commit to a single penny of tax reduction, when a child of five could achieve billions in tax cuts without detriment to the wellbeing of the nation whatsoever. We've no one to turn to.

Anonymous. I do vote UKIP whenever they can scrape the pennies to throw a candidate my way. My only problem with the Liberatian Party is that they'll simply split an already tiny vote. My cri de coeur was more rhetorical than literal. Unfortunately the Tories can't bother their arse to do their duty.